Rethinking Collective Transformation [Relational Approaches] Session 4. May 21st, 2026

Today’s sessions challenged some of the most foundational assumptions about leadership, politics, values, and social struggle, asking us to rethink how we come to know, relate, and organize collectively. Across the presentations, one theme kept emerging: the tension between individualistic, “substantialist” ways of understanding the world and more relational, interconnected approaches to society, power, and change.PhD candidate Ellina Watanabe explored the contrast between Agency Theory and Stewardship Theory, Dr. Zoltán Lakatos critically examined how “Western values” are often treated as universal, objective, and superior within political discourse, and Dr. Salmaan Khan took us with storytelling on a reflection about radical relationism, dialectics, and intersectional struggle, moving beyond mechanical explanations of oppression toward the lived, emotional, and relational dimensions of power. These sessions did not offer easy answers, they created urgent questions and opened powerful conversations about relationality, embodiment, storytelling, coloniality, and the possibilities of collective transformation.